Who was the real Shashi Kapoor?
He was definitely India’s first international star — long before the Priyanka Chopras and Irrfan Khans made their mark in Hollywood.
He was also, by all counts, the most handsome Hindi film actor of that period — a fact corroborated by almost everyone I’ve spoken to, from Sharmila Tagore to James Ivory. “He was just so good looking,” Shabana Azmi, his co-actor in several films, tells me. “In fact, I sincerely believe that his good looks went against him. Because the first impression was that of a strikingly attractive man, people would forget what a fine actor he was!”
Then, there is Shashi, the producer, who backed some of the best independent movies in India in the 1970s and 1980s. He encouraged filmmakers to take risks, even if it meant that this would eventually drive him to bankruptcy. Kunal Kapoor says that his father refused to forget the debt he owed an industry that gave him his privileged position as a star; he wanted to support the world that he was part of. “He believed in this,” Kunal tells me. “He would actually complain about other actors who would become stars, make money, secure a good life, but then, never contribute to the place that nurtured them.”
There’s Shashi, the theatre enthusiast, who used to love the immediacy of the stage, and invested all his money in that renowned institution in Bombay, Prithvi. His fondness for theatre was inherited from his father, Prithviraj Kapoor — who worked in films to keep his first love, Prithvi Theatres, operational — and honed by his father-in-law and wife, Jennifer Kendal Kapoor. Shashi and Jennifer built Prithvi on the same plot of land in Juhu that Prithviraj had leased a few decades earlier to create a permanent home for his Prithvi Theatres. “This is what we grew up with, what my father taught me and what his father taught him,” Sanjna Kapoor, Shashi’s daughter, tells me.
Through Sanjna and Kunal Kapoor, we get glimpses of Shashi, the family man, who loved his wife dearly and did all he could to support his household, even if it meant acting in a few rather terrible (but well-paying) movies. To the surprise of almost everyone, Shashi could easily transition between art-house and American productions, and mainstream Hindi films. In 1982, he acted in the hit comedy Namak Halaal with Amitabh Bachchan. The next year, Shashi appeared in James Ivory’s critically acclaimed Heat and Dust, which was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Earlier, in 1978, he produced and played the lead in the National Award-winning Junoon. Months later, he appeared in Subhash Ghai’s Gautam Govinda.
Once Shashi embraced a role, he accepted the terms of that project.
In this respect, Shashi’s career actually paralleled that of Sharmila Tagore. She, too, transitioned smoothly between films directed by Satyajit Ray (Apur Sansar, Devi, Nayak, Seemabaddha) and those by Shakti Samanta (An Evening in Paris, Aradhana, Amar Prem) and Yash Chopra (Waqt, Daag). Both Shashi and Sharmila understood the place of each type of cinema, and gladly worked through different systems and sensibilities.
Finally, there’s Shashi, the idealist, who could always see people with an equal eye; it’s something that Pamela Chopra, wife of the late Yash Chopra, confirms. “Shashi on the sets would treat each person, from the producer down to the smallest actor, uniformly.” Sharmila, his frequent co-star and friend, adds: “Not just fellow actors and producers — if you talk to technicians, you will learn that Shashi had their support. He would shake hands with them, say ‘Mera naam Shashi Kapoor hai (My name is Shashi Kapoor)’ and have tea in their company.”
Neetu Singh Kapoor, who is married to Rishi Kapoor, and starred opposite Shashi in Deewaar, among other films, echoes this sentiment: “I remember what a gentleman he was on the sets of that film. He would talk to the make-up man, his kid, with everybody. So human and so down to earth.”
(Excerpted with permissions of Rupa Publications from Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star by Aseem Chhabra)